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Friday, 19 January 2018

How on earth do you keep the good stuff coming? What about the general maintenance of your Instagram content, and more importantly, how do you keep your content current when you're planning out as far in advance as possible?

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Alright, you've taken all of the advice I've given so far, and you've got an amazing content plan in place.

But how on earth do you keep the good stuff coming? What about the general maintenance of your Instagram content, and more importantly, how do you keep your content current when you're planning out as far in advance as possible?

Well, my friend, I'm so glad you asked, because that is exactly what we're talking about today!

Here are

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1. Use. A. Scheduler.

Seriously, if you aren't using a scheduling app for your Instagram content, you're just torturing yourself. Not only does scheduling your posts take away the worry of winging your content, it also lets you plan in advance exactly how your feed will look. And you know that here at Bulleting Bird, if there ain't a plan, it ain't happening!

Here's the good news: you know Tailwind? That mysterious app that Pinterest-lovers swear by? Yeah, I played with it, and it now has an Instagram feature as well! You can upload and schedule posts for your Instagram, add captions, and Tailwind will send you a reminder when it's time to post!

The free Buffer plan is more than sufficient to let you schedule a week or more of your Instagram posts (depending on how frequently you post), and to be honest, I only used Buffer for my Instagram and Twitter, which means the limit for the number of accounts you can connect to Buffer was pretty much irrelevant!

Nope, I get nothing from you checking out Buffer, but I highly recommend it!

2. Create A Content Plan (+ SWIPEFILE!)

This doesn't have to be anything fancy, it could just be a table in your journal or on Excel. In fact, I want to share with you the exact Excel (or Google Sheets) spreadsheets I use to plan out my content.

Grab it below!

The reason you want to invest some time into a content plan is that it will make your feed so much more coherent. I speak about the importance of a coherent feed in my FREE 5 DAY E-MAIL COURSE, WINSTAGRAM!

The way I create a content plan is by using the swipefile above to get a visual-ish layout of all the content for every month. Because I post twice a day to my Instagram, I have two rows for every week, but you can totally customize it as you please. The point is to be able to visualize the content in terms of what you're going to share every week. This spreadsheet also helps me decide on any weekly or monthly themes I may want to focus on. A content plan, paired with a scheduling app equals a smooth workflow, and don't we all love a good workflow?

3. Work In Batches

I've probably said this before on the blog, and I've definitely said this a thousand times over on my Instagram, but batch-working is everything. Every week, I set aside one day (usually a Tuesday) to shoot and edit all of the pictures, write out every caption (that is not date-sensitive), and prepare all the hashtag lists for the whole week ahead. Sure, I end up changing the captions and sometimes even the order in which I post, but it honestly doesn't take more than five minutes out of every other day in my week.

I have always endorsed batch-working, and I always will! To learn more about it (and about how to be a productive bad-ass in general) check out my e-book, A Winner's Mind! Chapter one is totally free to read!

4. Grid Previews

One great addition to my batch-working schedules is this app called Unum. I've mentioned it before, and I'm sure I'll mention it again at some point! Unum allows you to schedule your posts, and it displays previous and future posts in Instagram's 3-column grid format!

Sure, it seems pretty basic, but I can not tell you how much this has changed my Instagram game! When you preview your scheduled images in the grid format, it helps you compare adjacent images to see if the edits all look coherent, and this is especially helpful if you're going for that whole alternate light-and-dark post pattern.

There are loads of apps that have this feature, and while I don't use Unum for scheduling at all, I find that it does the job, is fairly basic but powerful, and doesn't really take much space on my phone. Highly recommend!!!

(Psst! Not sure what to post to your Instagram account? Grab your FREE 15 days of Instagram content plan by clicking the banner below!)

5. Schedule A Profile Update

I prefer to do this every quarter. As your Instagram account grows, you'll find that your content changes, and so does your target audience. If you're aiming to attract new, better suited followers to your content, your profile needs to be exactly what they're looking for!

The reason I prefer to update my profile every three months is because it takes me that long to really see a change in my content and my preferred audience. I usually take an audit on the last day of each quarter, where I note down which posts have been the most loved, which colours work best for my feed, the demographics and interests of the current majority of my followers, and so on. Then, I tweak my profile accordingly, so I'm attracting more of my current crowd, rather than people looking for content I'm no longer passionate about.